Curious if any of you have great, short answers to this simple question.
Some other ways to bake the pie:
What do you see possible with Holochain, that isn’t possible with other frameworks?
How does Holochain differ from everything else out there?
Why does Holochain make you excited?
Listening (hard) for better ways to talk, simply about this very subject. The shorter and simpler we can communicate this, the easier it will be to kickstart people’s imagination. Thanks for your words and thoughts!
Hi @jarodholtz. I think @marycamacho does a great job of answering this question in this AMA recording (this link will take you directly to her response). Hopefully you’ll find it useful.
Edit: Haha, I just realised you’re an Official Team Member I guess what you’re really interested in hearing is responses from the community
Okay then, I guess I’ll bite
Possibilities: Giving users more control/agency over their data. Giving devs cheaper, more sustainable/scalable hosting.
Differences: It’s beautifully suited for building both traditional distributed apps and for decentralized solutions that refer to contracts and currencies.
Exciting: It’s fixing what’s broken about the current internet. Users should not be the product. We should not be funding global communications with advertising money - it’s gross.
Also, I heard someone say about Holochain (I’m paraphrasing), “It’s values are baked into the platform.” That really resonated with me
For those who understand Web3:
Holochain is a scalable infrastructure ready for your Web3 apps. (not sure if the ‘ready’ part is true yet?)
For those who don’t understand Web3:
Holochain will enable new types of organisations to be built on the internet and we hope these new organisations will be better for solving environmental and social problems.
Hi all,
My knowledge of Blockchain and Holochain is zero. But transactions will be more and more done in blockchain.
I want to use blockchain technology for a small sized energy company in The Netherlands.
What I am wondering: does Holochain has the some functionality as blockchain and is it possible to use Holochain to support your business model to do transactions with clients and suppliers. And if so, is it possible to link Holochain with an ERPsystem?
You may be very interested in Holo-REA, a Resources-Events-Agents accounting system built on Holochain. It seems pretty much a perfect fit for your use-case.
There are many advantages of Holochain over most blockchain systems. One advantage is that transactions/interactions can take place directly agent-to-agent, each having their own individual ledgers, without requiring a single ledger that records all transactions on the entire blockchain. It is far more efficient and environmentally friendly than most blockchain systems.
If you were to go with blockchain instead, you might look into something like Hyperledger, which is permissioned and private, so maybe be faster, more efficient and more appropriate for your needs.
Without knowledge of your main business the following project may also take your interest.
It‘s an Australian Company Building the Internet of Energy with holochain
What sprung to mind when I read this was “Why?”. I looked once again at your post:
OK, so it sounds to me like you’ve heard lots of buzz and hype around this “blockchain” thing and somehow stumbled across Holochain and something you’ve seen has peaked your interest, hence the post. That’s great! If I am correct, it would be great to know what it was that enticed you to create the post as I am presuming you haven’t posted the same question on every different blockchain project. It may provide some insight as to how Holochain could be good for your project.
I can highly recommend having a quick read of this article which may help provide an overview before delving into specific project requirements: Here’s Holochain in 100, 200, and 500 words.
OK, so let’s now take a look at your question in the context of the discussion thread you posted it in, which is @jarodholtz asking “Why build on Holochain?”
…covering these three areas:
Without knowing anything about your project, I am simply going from my own thoughts about the current world, I am posting this in order for you to be empowered to do similar however with the added bonus of your intimate domain knowledge. Then you may find you have more specific questions to ask and thus the answers to your questions will hopefully be a step closer!
What do you see possible with Holochain, that isn’t possible with other frameworks?
For a small sized energy company in The Netherlands to adopt Holochain I see the possibility for it to be a forerunner in the co-creation of a sustainable planet by taking Holochain’s agent-centric approach to its operational procedures.
I believe this because I see how the Holochain team and community co-operate closely with projects, along with seeing how other such co-operatives are supported in The Netherlands. One example is the Cities for Change project:
“The world needs to change.
We are facing a Climate crisis, housing shortage, growing inequality in wealth and power, and now the corona crisis.
However, change is coming from cities, neighbourhoods and districts all over the world. Here a movement is growing and flourishing for a social, just and sustainable society in which well-being and solidarity are at its centre. It’s time for thinkers and doers from these cities to come together, share, inspire, learn from each other, connect and work together.”
…who have recently asked the meet.coop cooperative to set them up with a server. meet.coop provide services around the online video meeting and conference software BigBlueButton - a kind of Free/Libre Open Source Zoom, however more focused on learning environments.
This shows to me that the country is open to innovative ideas, and that there is a large enough community in order to provide collaboration opportunities enough to launch and sustain the project.
If you were to ask the same question for where I live, England, I would hesitate to answer the same, but then again that might just be me on the inside looking out in a ‘grass is always greener’ way lol!
With other frameworks - narrowing to blockchain as that’s the context in which you ask your question, I feel you would be bound by the limitations of the scope of their project as opposed to Holochain which is a project aimed at providing General Purpose Computing in a decentralised, distributed environment. This is to say there may very well be blockchain projects that suit your current needs, however once you have invested in adopting them you may find it very hard to adapt to your specific needs as the agent / user, whereas with Holochain you are the creator of the rules and the holder of your own data. You are always in control - now and in the future.
How does Holochain differ from everything else out there?
Holochain is unassuming, so it doesn’t dictate that you should operate like this or transact like that because that’s how they think the world should be, instead it empowers you to write the rules. Holochain provides you with the tools in order to create new, more natural ways of engaging with your ecosystem of staff, suppliers, clients, and so on. This hasn’t been done much before though, so it is not something to be taken as a quick and easy option, however is something that is worth investing in if an organisation is planning on being around longer than the next couple of years. Once a foundational framework is in place supporting the current organisational operations then both the technology and knowledge are more in place in order to grow, whereas if a non-Holochain solution is implemented the questions are presumed to be answered by the products “bought” and the cost of incremental innovation is much higher, if indeed possible at all.
There are some ‘internet computer’ projects out there based on the blockchain, however they rely on this massive blockchain instead of the true decentralised and distributed infrastructure Holochain enables. This article is a long but worthwhile read if you really want to understand the bigger picture, as Holochain is one small part of a much larger set of projects being built in order to more closely match technology with nature - “Unenclosable Carriers and the Future of Communication”
Why does Holochain make you excited?
I am 48 years old and I have been playing with computers and code since I was given a BBC ‘B’ when I was 9. I love computers, I wonder in amazement at what they are capable of doing, however whenever I have encountered their use in the commercial world it has always been very demoralising. The clash of a time-based world and the art of creation in technology has so far produced a world in where the most technologically advanced innovation is controlled by the few and the most technology empowering projects are often struggling for support.
Holochain, along with their strategy both short and long term with regards to funding developments, seem to provide a much-needed balance between these two massive forces, and that’s why I can sit here on a Sunday evening avoiding doing things I should be doing by rambling on a bit more about my current love for this project
It makes me excited to think that someone can come into these forums, post a simple question, and perhaps change the course of history. Or not, they might go “wtf is this crazy person talking about, I just want faster and cheaper” and that’s totally fine too, because Holochain does that out-of-the-box!
Yeah, after testing the launcher we can feel it for real What a pleasure to test true P2P apps !
It’s the first framework that offer complete Peer to Peer applications ! This seems to be the most advanced distributed architecture yet.
With torrent you have peer to peer file sharing. With Holochain you have completes p2p applications
It is what correspond the most to the ideas of web 3.0 that I have. Web 1 and web 2 are client vs server architecture, now everyone can be server AND client in the same time… it’s quantum !
It opens so many doors, more than blockchain ! It’s very flexible, so we have great freedom for innovation ! We can create local and global communities organically. It’s a wonderful technological Terra Incognita of a new paradigm !
I guess what you’re really interested in hearing is responses from the community 
